Say YES only to vaccines

Vaccines are one of the most successful inventions in medicine. Vaccination helps protect our population (all ages) from many a diseases. Had vaccination not been there, we would have had at least one member in our neighborhood who might have been suffering from a vaccine preventable disease. Currently we have vaccines against some 20 diseases (recent ones being against Rotavirus and Papillomavirus).

Today's healthy society owes greatly to these vaccinations. We must say YES to vaccinations. They are not to be scared of.

Off late, there have been people in our own societies who have been making efforts to keep ourselves deprived of this great gift of medicine by spreading rumours against the effectiveness of vaccines and/or associating them with diseases and conditions like impotence/infertility (with Oral Polio Vaccine), Autism (MMR, Hepatitis B), Leukemia (Hepatitis B), Pertussis (Adverse neurological effects). These people should be taught that none of the research has proved anything they say.

But the pity is that many of us fall prey to such rumors and do not allow our kids to be vaccinated.

Regarding Polio, in India, there has been rumor against OPV. This lead to many a parents and family members refusing vaccination. This should not let us believe those morons. Just to reassure you, OPV has absolutely NO links with impotence/infertility. How can someone believe that a vaccine (that too 2 drops only) can cause impotence/infertility? :P

Recently, the World Health Organization came up with a good write up on the vaccination. Titled "No vaccine for the scaremongers"; this article written by Jane Parry is an excellent read.

It writes: "Despite these successes, vaccine anxieties continue to periodically impede this highly effective public health measure. In certain industrialized countries, most notably the USA, public concern has shifted its focus from the diseases vaccination can prevent, to the risks of the vaccines themselves. The Internet has become a significant channel for anti-vaccination views. The popular video-sharing web site YouTube offers a plethora of anti-vaccination clips. The Internet has also become a forum for alternative medicine practitioners to present their anti-vaccination ideas and promote alternative products.

While parents in developing countries have, for example, first-hand experience of measles and welcome vaccination against it, the uptake by parents for the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine in many developed countries has yet to recover almost 10 years after a study linking it to autism, even though the original study has long since been discredited and there is overwhelming scientific evidence that refutes the link.

A similar scare linking the mercury compound vaccine, thiomersal, to autism led to its elimination from most USA and European vaccines that contained it, despite the lack of scientific evidence to support this measure. Indeed, five large-scale studies failed to find a link between thiomersal and autism, and, according to some studies, the incidence of autism has risen after discontinuation of thiomersal use in vaccines.

Anti-vaccination scares can have lasting, harmful effects. Pertussis (or whooping cough) vaccination was halted in Japan in the mid-1970s owing to public concerns over adverse neurological effects. At that point, Japan had brought the disease under control after introducing immunization in 1947. Pertussis is a highly contagious respiratory disease and one of the leading causes of vaccine-preventable deaths worldwide, causing 300 000 deaths a year, predominantly among unvaccinated or partially vaccinated infants, who go on to suffer vomiting, dehydration and malnutrition."

This article refers the fear associated with vaccines to have their root associated with Clutter Incident of 1950s when the Polio vaccines prepared by the Clutter laboratories cause vaccine induced paralysis. Dr. Paul Offit has written a book "The Clutter Incident". This book has been reviewed by the British Medical Journal.

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